The Hindu Business Line : BPL Healthcare plans big push

New launch: Mr Vijay Simha, Chief Operating Officer, BPL HealthCare, and Prof. Armin Bolz, CEO, Corscience GmbH, Germany, displaying the biphasic defibrillator at a press conference in Bangalore on Friday. —

Our Bureau

Bangalore, June 6 BPL Healthcare, the medical equipment division of BPL Ltd, has planned an aggressive push into the mass-based healthcare sector in the coming months with a series of competitively priced early-diagnosis devices.

The products ranging from personal health parameter monitors and ECGs to heart-reviving defibrillators are targeted at primary health centres, small and mid-sized hospitals that form 80 per cent of domestic healthcare market, senior company officials said on Friday.

The division — the oldest in the group headed by Mr Ajit Nambiar — is looking at revenues of over Rs 400 crore by 2013, or nearly a five-fold growth.

“The BPL group has identified this division as one of its focus areas for growth,” Mr C.R. Menon, Chief Executive Officer of BPL Ltd, told a news conference to announce the launch of two cardiac care devices.

The bi-phasic defibrillator, BPL-DEFI-ART, and wearable ECG monitor, CorBELT, are the first of products it plans to roll out over the next three months — the division, in the past year, tied up with 17 companies worldwide to bring out innovative and affordable devices. The same devices from Philips and Medtronics are imported.

BPL will manufacture the devices at its Palakkad facility and market them under license from German company Corscience GmbH, which has designed and developed them. The defibrillators with automated voice guidance, soon in Indian languages, are priced at Rs 75,000-1.5 lakh apiece and the supplies are to start in July, said Mr A. Vijay Simha, Chief Operating Officer and Vice-President, Healthcare Business Group. More products will follow under the technical association with Corscience while the German company will also explore Indian talent.

Mr Simha said BPL would start a campaign through cardiologists to have such devices installed at public places like railway and bus stations, trains, offices, residential complexes and malls.

BPL’s present medical range includes patient monitoring systems (to track BP, ECG), cardiac monitors, defibrillators, stress test systems, X-ray equipment, nebulisers, oxygen concentrator, ultrasound scanners, foetal monitors and dopplers.

More Stories on : Outlook | Medical & Surgical Equipments

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page